Cooking appliances, e.g., cooktops or ranges (also known as hobs or stoves), generally include one or more heated portions for heating or cooking food items within or on a cooking utensil placed on the heated portion. For instance, burners may be included with each heated portion. The heated portions utilize one or more heating sources to output heat, which is transferred to the cooking utensil and thereby to any food item or items that are disposed on or within the cooking utensil. For instance, a griddle may be provided to extend across one or more heated portion. When disposed above the heated portion, the griddle generally provides a substantially flat cooking surface.
Although a griddle may provide a flat cooking surface, difficulties may arise in dispersing or spreading heat across the flat cooking surface. Generally, heat from the burners of the appliance is directly transferred to the griddle according to the footprint of the burner. In turn, heat may be uneven across various portions of the flat cooktop surface. This may result in one portion of the flat cooking surface being heated to a significantly higher temperature than the rest of the flat cooking surface (i.e., creating “hot spots”). If the griddle extends over multiple burners, such hot spots may be increasingly problematic and cause food items thereon to be cooked unevenly. It can be difficult to balance the heat output of multiple burners. Moreover, since the relative heat output of the multiple burners may vary, a user may accidentally overheat the griddle and/or food thereon.
Some existing systems have attempted to address these issues by including a single elongated burner over which a griddle may be arranged. For example, certain gas cooktop appliances with integrated griddles include an elongated burner for more evenly heating the integrated griddle. However, elongated burners can provide limited utility outside of heating griddles. Also, consumers generally only use griddles occasionally. Moreover, a size of integrated griddles may be limited due to the need to center the integrated griddle over the gas burners. Integrated griddles can also block a significant portion of airflow to the gas burner as well as exhaust from the gas burner, which leads to poor combustion and excessive heating of cooktop components.
Accordingly, a gas cooktop appliance with features for evenly heating a removable griddle would be useful. In particular, a gas cooktop appliance with features for evenly heating a large griddle across multiple burners would be useful.